


Forty-Five Seconds

by birdsandivory



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Kissing, Loneliness, M/M, Mild Language, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, Sweet and simple, background katt, boys in a hospital bed, but it's exactly what we shancers wanted lmao, keith and matt are great friends, shance, shangst, shiro is lonely, this is just after s7, well lance is in a hospital bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 05:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17912663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdsandivory/pseuds/birdsandivory
Summary: The end of one war breeds the demons of a new one and they're all in Shiro's head. But no matter what, Lance is always able to bring him back from the depths — and he only needs forty-five seconds to make everything alright again.





	Forty-Five Seconds

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted the post-season 7 that I was looking for. And after the last season aired, I needed it more! I really wanted some beautiful Shance out there for you guys and myself. Feel free to tell me what you think and lend me more of your angsty ideas. uvu
> 
> Thank you [Silverine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverine).

_"By the cracks of the skin I climbed to the top._

_I climbed the tree to see the world._

_When the gusts came around to blow me down,_

_I held on as tightly as you held onto me."_

_\- To Build a Home, The Cinematic Orchestra  
_

 

* * *

 

The medbay is an oddly comforting place.

It spans across one of the Garrison’s huge facilities, the open halls giving way into a flowering courtyard, a beautiful and warm sight for the patients to gaze upon from their beds. And Shiro finds the way it wraps around the flora to be inviting instead of cold. The whole building should reek of antiseptics, of alcohol, and something unique to a hospital — but it’s pleasant, with the clean of a tidy home that doesn’t invade his senses with the foreboding of death.

He walks the patio concrete in a mood much better than what he’s endured the week before, the end of the war breathing new life back into him after years of holding his breath.

Finally, he thinks, he can begin healing.

Shiro has no wounds to stitch, no bloody lacerations or bumps or bruises, but the medbay seems to be the best place to start.

Everything he cares about is here, after all.

The lilies in his arms bend toward the sun, his footsteps heavy down the outside hall as he makes his way to a secluded building; it houses the Paladins of Voltron, still in need of mending into their battle scars.

It carries his friends.

And… it’s where Lance is.

The red paladin is his first and most important stop — with all of his heart, he wants to know the other’s okay despite the fact that so many had told him the moment they retrieved the man from his lion that he’d be just fine, to tell him that _he himself_ is okay and that Lance doesn’t have to wait for him anymore. There had been so much blood and smoke and commotion that words like that, reassuring and spoken with a sigh of relief, fell on deaf ears.

Walking there now feels like stepping along the boundless expanse of the Astral Plane—

_Awake in a dream._

That tension between his shoulders reminds him that seeing is believing, though, and he’s intent on disproving that theory.

His movements are thundering, an even pad of boots on concrete, and he reaches the bay where Lance rests with a sigh — synthetic fingers gripping the tied stems he’s cradling. It takes just a flicker of his eyes and a game of chance that his gaze is drawn to one of the closed windows, their curtains strung open and he can’t help but watch on in surprise at the sight of the paladin he’s searching for sleeping peacefully on the hospital bed.

Shiro’s overwhelmed with the look of him, eyes closed but without the doubt that they would never open again; he has to take a deep breath in order to sigh his thanks, preparing his mind and heart for what he’s going to say.

But he sees Veronica beyond the window and whatever thoughts he has of barging in and making a heroic appearance come to an end.

Her hand is in Lance’s, gentle as she runs her fingers over his wrist, expression soft while deep eyes travel his sleeping form with all the concern of a sister Shiro would expect. She’s just as worried as anyone, wondering, waiting for the moment when the other would wake up and lift the weight from her shoulders. And soon, there will be more than just her sitting there — his family, his mother and father, people he was close to before _Takashi Shirogane_ — all waiting.

The Captain of the Atlas backs away from that shared sibling moment, allowing realization to wash over him like freezing rain.

Lance has people to come home to; there’s no reason for him to wait for Shiro as though he’s all he has.

He _isn’t._

Turning away from the medbay suddenly, he feels unwanted and unwelcome, though that’s probably untrue. But demons are funny like that, and if anything, he doesn’t want to intrude. He can wait.

He can wait.

Tentative, he wanders the Garrison silently, mind drawing a blank as he thinks of somewhere to go — a destination, a _home._ And it isn’t until his boot meets the foot of a monument that he realizes he’s at the carved stone where Adam’s name is engraved.

It hurts to look at, that gentle smile that had beamed into the camera so hopefully when the pilot’s identification photo was taken. Shiro finds it bittersweet now, an ache in his heart when it used to bring him so much joy. And he wonders if coming here was a sign that he’s lost any semblance of home after dying the first time; coming back was a long-winded, cruel joke the fates play now that he has nowhere to go.

He doesn’t call his family. Instead, he sits in front of the monument for hours at a time in the early morning wondering if he should — but… he doesn’t. He doesn’t think he’s ready to show them half the man he is after being their golden boy for so long.

He can see his father now. Tall, strong, asking where his son is hiding inside of all this white hair and synthetic muscle. He’s a wall of insecurities pretending to be a great leader, and despite it all — maybe he _is._

Because Lance makes him feel like it.

Shiro closes his eyes at the thought. He doesn’t know how much time passes either, but there are droplets of rain on his cheek when he opens them up again and he shakes his head at the luck of it with a melancholic smile. He should be okay with things as they are, should just be happy that everything is as it should be, but the monument he’s standing before is hard proof.

Everything slips right from his fingertips.

Shiro leaves the bouquet of flowers at the foot of the stone pillar because he can’t leave without offering Adam _something,_ and he’s so sure Lance will have such a great number of gifts that it’d be silly to bring them anyhow. As he bids his goodbyes, he promises to visit again; for right now, he hopes his old friend understands that there’s someone else on his mind.

He wants to see Lance.

The trek back to the medbay isn’t far, but it feels like a lifetime until he finds his way to the courtyard again, the rain hardly heavy and yet, it’s enough to wet his coat and chill him to the bone. It’s a bit more lively mid-morning, people milling about under the protection of metal arches and stone. And still, he feels like he’s the only one there, searching listlessly.

But he finally catches him, Lance, though it’s from just down the sidewalk to his building. His window is wide open this time, the sun shining something blinding along the too white linens on his bed, piles of flowers peeking from around every corner of the square opening that he hadn’t noticed before.

It takes Shiro’s breath away to see that he’s awake.

Several white bandages wrap around his hands and arms, his cheek plastered with a square of gauze, and he wants nothing more than to kiss the aches away, to wish them gone so they can never hurt his lion again. It’s a need to protect like he’s shielding the universe, only this time, what he’s keeping safe is more important than constellated stars and living planets.

He moves to rush into the medbay, hoping to pull Lance into his arms and let him know that everything is alright now that they’re together.

But… someone does it for him.

Lance is smiling ahead as a group of people move in to crowd him; they’re all so close, but the paladin seems unbothered, used to the lack of personal space, and Shiro realizes that it’s his family. The likeness of the faces surrounding him is undeniable, their wild mannerisms all the same.

An older couple makes way toward him — it must be his mother and father — and the woman touches Lance’s face gently, eyes watering.

Shiro takes a step forward as the red paladin throws his arms around her, just barely out of sight by the open window, back pressed to the wall. They need this moment, and the Captain’s barely presentable as he is - wet, disheveled, without anything to show for him being there.

But he has Lance’s love, he thinks, so maybe he can learn to fit in.

He listens to that voice, a soft melody, muffled in his mother’s shoulder.

“I missed you, ma,” he cries, “I love you more than anything.”

It strikes Shiro like a chord and he can’t decide if those words are proof that fitting in is more than difficult when you have no place or just something he wasn’t meant to hear.

There are droplets of water on his face, only it’s not raining anymore, and it hasn’t been since he returned from the monument etched with Adam’s name.

But Lance brings the storm with him, and the clouds circle above Shiro’s head.

He tries not to stare at the man through the window of the Garrison’s medical bay, surrounded by family and friends and people who love him from the world they came from, to think that there’s just _no way_ he belongs.

 

* * *

 

He goes to visit Keith instead.

Shiro remembers how scared he’d been, watching the closest thing to family he had fall from space and — to his fears — into a grave. That hopeless feeling was lost the moment Coran had assured him that everyone had made it out just fine, but heading there now brings the terror back and he’s not sure what to expect.

He pushes Lance, alive and well and smiling in his family’s arms, from his mind the moment he reaches the door. And it’s with a deep breath and a careful push of the heavy plat that he walks inside to find the paladin sitting with Krolia and Kosmo by his side, the Galran poking and prodding at her son while he protests with a frown and a groan.

Shiro smiles at the sight of them.

It isn’t long before the Galran notices him, nodding his way with a deep respect she seems to have for him now.

“Keith, your Captain is here,” she says, and Shiro’s nearly in tingles when violet eyes look his way, something between surprise and relief swimming in them. He tries not to seem so melancholic, stepping into the room fully as Kosmo comes to knock at his knees, having quite the affinity for pets via Arm of Altea.

“Hey, Keith.” He notes the way Krolia slips from the room with the wolf in her wake and he nearly has half a mind to tell her that she should stay. He refrains, though, and takes a seat in the chair by the paladin’s bed. “How’ve you been doing?”

“Okay for the most part,” he admits with a sigh before he smiles Shiro’s way, “head hurts like a bitch.”

The Captain finds comfort in the crassness.

He spends the better part of an hour with his closest friend, sharing thoughts and worries, basking in the victories they’ve earned. It takes his mind off of all the things that plague him, that hurt despite the fact that they’ve cast away the whole of a raging war.

Keith’s too smart to not know when Shiro is troubled, too, and even though the paladin is making it better — he’s always been one for detecting the root of any issue, picking at it until someone gives in or gives up.

“What are you doing here, Shiro?” Piercing eyes narrow while an embarrassing story of years past is just in the middle of being told. It chills him, how someone so rash knows all the right questions to ask in order to baffle him, draw him out of hiding.

He simply smiles, “I came to see you.”

A skeptical Keith is an intriguing one, full of mystery even when he looks as though he knows exactly what Shiro doesn’t want him to. Instead of calling him out on it, however, he falls heavy against his pillows and goes about his words nonchalantly.

“I just thought you’d see him first.”

A well-placed, casually shoved into the ground red flag, Shiro thinks. And he rests his elbows upon the edge of paladin’s bed with a sigh. “He’s with family. I’m... not that?”

“Since when has Lance ever thought of you as anything other than his family? You know, besides the fact that you guys are…” There’s an undeniable awkwardness in his voice as he tapers off, a constant when it comes to he and Lance’s relationship, but he appreciates it all the same, even when Keith looks at him with a frown and says, “it’s stupid, especially for you, to think anything but.”

He’s harsh, Shiro realizes it from the way his teeth are grit, from the narrowed eyes and curled fists he’s presenting as if he’s willing to go to battle just because he refuses to _visit Lance._

Shiro just believes himself too weak.

“I just—”

“You know, that idiot is probably wondering why you didn’t go running to him first.”

“Keith.”

Shiro hears rather than sees the other sigh, his eyes dropping to the white sheets the black lion is lying in. “I never thought I’d see that day come where even _you_ are more dense than Lance, _the Razzle Dazzle._ ”

He supposes he’s offended as the last part is said with sarcasm and waving arms, he can’t decide if he should be or not, but Keith doesn’t often say things lightly — so he listens. Shiro knows listening doesn’t always accompany application, however, and he somehow talks himself out of thinking logically despite the fact that it’s _Keith_ telling him this.

The subject drops after that.

They talk idly about Keith’s injuries, how they want to get back out into the field already, how there’s no rest for them, there never is. It’s a welcomed distraction, this kind of conversation; straight and to the point, he doesn’t have to think about all the things still lingering in the back of his mind.

Shiro stands to leave when the other begins falling asleep on him, knowing the black paladin needs his rest and there are plenty of other times that he can come back and check in. And they can speak easy regardless of the subject.

When he leaves Keith’s room, it pains him to find out that he feels just as he did coming to.

Krolia and Kosmo step past him with fleeting looks as they head back to their own family with arms full of food and random E.R. shop gifts, and Shiro tries to ignore the vision of an older man and woman making way instead, broken English on their tongues as they rush to see their only son back from the dead.

The Captain breathes again when he’s crossed the threshold and arrives back in the courtyard, his lungs full of the fragrance of wildflowers.

But it’s not long before he finds himself _there_ once more.

He’s outside staring into the hospital room Lance is staying in, talking animatedly to a woman who bears his resemblance uncannily.

That must be Rachel.

She’s speaking to him animatedly, smiling so wide, it’s blinding — like a ray of sunshine he can’t imagine existing outside of Lance’s illuminating starlight. The man in the hospital bed is just as keen on speaking with his hands, lips moving so fast that Shiro knows he must be prattling on in his mother tongue.

It brings him a certain kind of joy, seeing the other talking for the first time since waking. He looks so happy even though his fingers and arms are banged up and a bruise has developed just to the right of his chin, angry and swollen against his dark skin.

Still, Shiro could look at him from afar all day in unconditional worship despite the fact.

When Lance happens to pick him out from across the way, though, he can’t believe that the paladin could be any more of a vision than he was moments before.

“Shiro?” His voice is so loud as he perks up, having twisted in his sheets to get up so quickly that the ‘ow’ from Rachel pulling him back down is telling of the extent of his injuries. So, he settles for waving the Captain’s way, a huge grin on his face. “Shiro!”

Hearing Lance say his name and watching him generally cause a ruckus brings a blush and a smile to his face even though he’s sure he would have shaken his head in any other instance.

And he almost casts everything aside to go to him, but the other’s sister is staring at him so strangely, blankly, and he’s suddenly very unsure of himself.

Where did this lost little boy inside of him come from? He wonders.

But he’s not going away, so Shiro just... waves.

He hates the way Lance looks at him when he turns to enter the nearest bay door and it isn’t the one _he’s_ recovering in, but he can’t face him, not yet. There’s still so much weighing him down that the farther he walks away from that open window, the lighter he feels. And there are other members of his team there to distract him, hopefully in need of his company.

 

* * *

 

His visit with Hunk is short and sweet.

Shay is there at his bedside, holding his hand as his mother and father bombard Shiro with questions and words of thanks. They’re so kind, the both of them, and the Captain easily sees just where the yellow paladin gets that unending kindness and those unfaltering rays of sunshine when he speaks from.

He forgets the sun is a temporary warmth.

Hunk regards him with so much pride and admiration that he can’t help but smile; it’s only when Shiro realizes that the man is spreading himself thin between all of the people who’ve come to visit him that he says his goodbyes early as to not get in the way of that fairness.

It’s funny, how easily he fits into wandering the halls instead.

Doctors, medical staff, pilots, and navigators alike greet him with a curt ‘Captain’ and a salute he’ll never get tired of returning, and he stands just a little bit taller as he makes way to the room Allura is recovering in. He waits before the door after knocking, patient as Coran lets him in — which he does with a fond smile and a clap on the back for good measure.

Allura is just as cheerful, always strong beneath the pain she constantly endures. And though she happily chirps her ‘hellos’ to Shiro, she pays more attention to the one who prevents that aching loneliness she’s had since waking. He can tell that she doesn’t feel as though she and Coran are all that’s left anymore, because Romelle is beside the Altean in her bed, mooning over an old soap opera someone must have put on the television for them.

Shiro speaks with Coran most of the time. Something tells him that the two women are in their own little world, and he doesn’t want to disturb them. Instead, he listens to the wise words of a strategist, picking apart the riddles as if their answers will pull his thoughts from the sickness in his gut that reminds him he’s not supposed to be there.

A gentle hand presses to his forehead and he’s surprised to see the Altean concerned.

“Are you alright, my boy?”

He hasn’t called Shiro that in a long time. It makes him feel a few years younger, naive and still trying to figure out how to fight a war when he can’t even disguise himself as someone stronger.

And now, he can’t even face the person he loves.

“Yeah,” he says with a smile, pushing all of it aside, “I’m fine.”

Their conversation somehow leads him outside into the courtyard again and maybe, he thinks — _this_ is home, wandering without a true place to stay.

Midday has fallen into evening and Lance’s room is still lit. Somehow, it looks like there are even more people than before that share that same perfect smile. And Shiro can’t begin to understand how someone surrounded by so much laughter can have so many demons lurking inside.

But the Captain knows best that no number of achievements or gold stars or medals from a hero’s hero can get rid of the enemy within; Shiro should be there with him, adding to that laughter instead of fighting monsters of his own.

He catches one of Lance’s family members — maybe an aunt or a cousin, he can never remember, there are too many — bringing a bundle in her arms over to the red paladin’s bed. It’s a child, he notes, and Lance’s eyes are so wide with wonder and amazement, he can nearly taste the tears in the corners of those endless blues — a recount of everything on Earth he’s missed.

The moment is so intimate that Shiro has to look away, missing just by a second a pair of melancholy hues.

He walks straight across the courtyard to another bunker filled with hospital beds, sighing a deep breath as he steps inside.

Pidge is the last he goes to see. And walking into a room with the people who practically raised him, he feels a little more at home now — but just a little. Sam and Colleen are happy to see him from their daughter’s bedside, both demanding a hug before he sees Pidge fiddling with a cellphone in her hands and paying him no mind. Upon further investigation, he’s tickled that she’s playing a several times remade knock off of Robo-Crush.

She deserves it.

“Hey, Shiro,” she says without looking up, concentrating on the screen before her. Pidge’s little fingers are moving a mile a minute, and he exhales with mirth at the sight of her, finally home despite being in a hospital bed. It reminds him of how painful it was, seeing her out in the hollows of space, searching without even knowing if she’d find what she was looking for.

It fulfills him, in a way, that she’s gotten everything back.

“Hey,” he knocks her shoulder with his, effectively jostling the phone from her hands.

Pidge squawks indignantly, scrambling to pick it up and groaning when the screen reads: GAME OVER.

“Shiro!”

“Sorry!” He raises his hands with a laugh, “you look like you’re feeling good.”

“We have excellent pain-killers here.” Sam chimes in, and the Captain observes the green lion’s energy — her wild movements, though she’s littered with cuts, bruises, and bandages — with an amused nod.

“Can I have what she’s havin’?”

A voice calls from behind him, and Shiro turns to Matt in the doorway, hands full of vending machine snacks.

Shiro’s never been so glad to see the rebel in his life.

“Matt—”

“Don’t mind the Pidgeon, Shiro.” He says with a grin, dumping his loot onto the bed. “She missed ya.”

Shiro believes him with a happy sigh, of course he does, because as much as the younger man jokes, he does mean what he says so long as one knows how to listen.

They move to lean beside each other against the open window, watching the Holts talk quietly about space and aliens and war like they hadn’t just experienced it all. But they’re forward thinkers and he has to remember that this is how they cope. It’s different, special, and they need it after finding each other again — that favored normalcy.

He’s focusing on them a little too hard with each passing second; he doesn’t notice the evening turn quickly into night and Matt bumps shoulders with him as though he’s trying to bring him back from wherever he’d gone.

Shiro looks over to find the rebel staring his way.

“You know, I never got to really tell you before, because…” His facial expression twists and turns with discomfort, but soon settles into a watery frown. The implied _‘it wasn’t really you’_ leaves an ache in the Captain’s heart, but he gets it, he understands. Matt smiles up at him and Shiro’s nod urges him to go on. “I missed you, too.”

The older man doesn’t admit it, but he can feel the quiver in his lips at the admittance, and he chooses to hide it by opening his arms to his oldest friend.

He hugs Matt tight, because of everyone Shiro knows, he understands him most. Saw him change from the starry-eyed pilot he was to the reigning champion. Saw him for what he had been — has been — _is._

“One bro to another, Shiro?” He begins as he pulls away and pats his shoulder, turning to look out of Pidge’s open room window. “I’ve been wondering why you’ve been running from one end of the medbay to the other all day… I could see you from here, you know. And I think I finally get it.”

Shiro frowns, embarrassed and at the same time, ashamed. “Get what?”

“You were a hero out there,” he says softly, smiling as though it’s such a fond memory, staring curiously out into the night. “You’re _still_ the hero, ya know... But heroes,” Matt points across the blooming flowers of the courtyard and Shiro looks out into that very direction to find that he’s been lead to Lance, leaning against the windowsill of his room. His fingers are picking and pulling at his layered bandages, frowning face illuminated by the building lights. “They put others before themselves. Maybe that’s what helps them heal everything that hurts.”

“Matt,” Shiro knows he’s right, knows he’s pointing to Lance because it’s clear he’s been avoiding him — and for no good reason. He’s been wholly selfish and it hurts to think that all of the times the man has been surrounded by family, he’s spent just as many alone.

“Get out of here already.” A punch on the shoulder and a grin winds him. "Besides. I can't stay here all night. There's someone _I_ have to see."

Shiro's surprised until he notices the blush on the other's cheeks and a strange warmth blooms in his chest at that look of longing. "Keith?"

Matt only huffs. "Get _out_ of here, Shiro."

And so, he does.

His feet move faster with every door he passes, every crew member and doctor he sees, and even when he notices that Lance’s window has closed in the amount of time it took to get to his bay — he only picks up the pace. And he doesn’t stop until he’s there, rushing into the paladin’s room in a manner that isn’t nearly as smooth as he wanted it to be.

But he’s there.

Lance is under the covers, sitting up and looking his way with wide eyes that don’t lid until he realizes just who it is.

“Shiro?”

The surprise in his voice is painful to swallow, as if Lance didn’t believe he would actually come. But that’s his own fault, isn’t it? He took too long to find the courage, ran away when it really mattered.

It’s times like these that he knows he’s failed as a leader.

As a partner.

Shiro takes a step forward — and then another two or three — until he makes it to the bed, sitting down beside Lance as he reaches forward slowly. Slowly, because maybe the other is so unforgiving that he doesn’t _want_ Shiro near him, and he waits until dark fingers are practically twitching with impatience to pull him into his arms.

He feels an overwhelming sense of relief at how quickly Lance falls into his embrace and he tightens his hold, burying his face in soft hair.

“Ow,” there’s laughter in his ear, low and quiet, playful though Shiro knows it was said because he _does_ hurt.

Relaxing his arms, he indulges in the moment; there’s a time for all of those tight _‘can’t let you go’_ hugs and it isn’t right then. Now is the time for reconciliation and revival, and he can’t mess that up. A wiry frame nestles into Shiro’s cage, pressing his ear to the Captain’s heartbeat and sighing in a way that can only be described as _coming back to each other after so many dreamless nights._

“Shiro... I’ve been waiting for you,” Lance mumbles into his uniform, pulling away just enough to look at him, fingers splayed along the short cut of the hair at his nape. “I knew you were okay, but I had to see you to believe it.”

Shaking his head incredulously, the Captain reaches up to touch a flesh and bone palm to the other’s cheek. “You’re the one who’s hurt.”

“But I woke up. I had to know you did, too — there was so much I missed.”

“Lance...”

That blue gaze grows impossibly soft, a crooked smile gracing those split lips. “You just missed my family. I wanted to introduce you to ma and my dad. And my sisters. And my brothers,” he lists on, rolling his eyes because even he knows how ridiculous the number of people sounds. “I’m pretty sure my aunts and uncles are here, too.”

Fingertips dance their way to Shiro’s jaw, gently grazing along the lobe of his ear and traveling his cheek until Lance’s tender touch gives attention to the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t bear an answer, too exalted by the connection, choosing instead to listen. “But... I’m glad we get this minute alone.”

“Yeah.” Alone is more comfortable anyhow, he thinks. And maybe he isn’t ready for the daunting task of figuring out where he fits in the puzzle of Lance’s life yet, but just being here with him and his wandering hands is enough. “Me, too.”

“Know why?” Voice low, he notices the attempt at playing coy to lighten the mood, realizing that the lion’s expression carries a certain kind of sadness — as if he _knows_ that Shiro’s not all alright. And he doesn’t wait for an answer as he leans in closer and whispers, “because now I can do this,” before pressing the gentlest kiss to his lips, patient and pulling away just as Shiro responds, _“without_ ma shoving herself between us and making me leave the door open all night.”

Shiro feels guiltier than ever, the softness of Lance’s skin under his hands — the way he presses his fingers into that tender spot just beneath his ears — is more than he deserves. There’s a smile waiting for him when he looks into too blue eyes that he can barely return, and he tightens his hold on the other just slightly.

“Lance, I’m so sorry. I should’ve come sooner.”

“Shiro, whatever you needed to do, it’s okay.” Lance looks at him like he knows his mind, like he’s trailed footprints into every dusty corner. It’s vulnerability, being there with him, but the burden feels shared all the same. “And everything is okay. Right?”

“Yeah,” Lance kisses his brow and Shiro feels absolved, “it is now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on [Tumblr](http://birdsandivory.tumblr.com/)!!!


End file.
